Some of the stiffness went out of Mahf’s whiskers. “Not if he has a second sonic disruptor,” he said, a hint of disappointment in his voice. Clearly, he’d been primed and ready for me to spill my guts. “With that he could shatter the coral matrix, scattering and killing the polyps inside.”
“This is a waste of time,” Prif Klas cut in harshly. “Tell me, Compton: How much longer were you planning to stay here?”
“I reserved our suite for another two days,” I told him. “As I presume you already know.”
“Then how do you explain
this
?” Reaching down to the floor by his feet, he hauled up my carrybags and slammed them triumphantly onto the table beside him. “Or do you claim this is not your luggage?”
I suppressed a grimace as he retrieved Bayta’s carrybag from the floor and added it to the lineup. Of course Bayta would have packed our bags before heading out on the tour; I’d told her we’d be leaving on the afternoon torchferry. “No, it’s our luggage, all right,” I conceded.
“And how do you explain that you have packed if you intend to stay two more days?”
“Bayta’s the one who handles our transportation schedule,” I said. “She must have learned that our original plans wouldn’t mesh with the Quadrail schedule and decided we had to leave this afternoon.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed his flat bulldog face. Naturally, they would already have pulled the resort’s long-range comm schedule from last night and learned she’d sent a message to the Tube. Nothing there they could use to trip me up.
But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try. “And what precisely was this scheduling conflict?” Prif Klas demanded.
Beside him, the Peer stirred in his seat. “With all due respect, Superintendent, we are getting nowhere,” he said.
“Yes, Honored One,” Prif Klas said, going instantly servile. “Your suggestion?”
The Peer gave a microscopic nod behind him. “There is a bed of coral right here,” he pointed out. “It is time we used it.”
And with that, the atmosphere in the room abruptly changed.
It wasn’t anything specific I could put my finger on; no pregnant silences or sharp inhalations, no stunned changes in expression or restless shifting of chairs. But in that moment, somehow, something changed. Something vitally important.
“Yes,” Prif Klas murmured, looking back at me with the same subtle fire I’d just seen in Mahf’s eyes. “Very well.”
“Wait a minute,” Applegate put in cautiously, his eyes flicking back and forth between them. “I don’t think this is something you really want to do.”
“You presume to speak to us thusly on our own world?” the Peer asked. His voice was calm, but his eyes were focused on Applegate like a pair of plasma torches.
“He’s a citizen of the Terran Confederation,” Applegate said, refusing to shrivel. “As such, he has certain rights.”
“You may lodge a protest when this is over,” the Peer said, motioning to the two soldiers flanking the door. “Guards: Remove his vac suit.” He cocked his head thoughtfully. “And the female’s suit, as well.”
“I can find him for you,” Bayta spoke up as the two soldiers started forward.
All eyes turned to her. “You mean Fayr?” Prif Klas asked.
“Yes,” she said. Her voice was tight, her expression that of someone facing a firing squad. “I just need the reader from my carrybag.”
I frowned, trying to read past the taut skin and haunted eyes. There couldn’t possibly be anything on her reader that would tell her where Fayr was. What was she up to?
“Very well,” Prif Klas said slowly, standing up. Turning her carry-bag on its side, he popped it open.
And then, with a sudden rush of heat across my face, I understood. Rather than let them make me touch the coral, she was going to trigger the Saarix-5.
I looked back at Prif Klas as he rummaged through Bayta’s carry-bag, freshly aware of the gentle weight of the vac helmet hanging from my shoulder clip. Depending on the poison’s dispersion radius, Bayta and I might be able to get our helmets on and sealed before the Saarix reached us. Applegate might possibly manage it, too, if he figured it out and reacted quickly enough.
But that left all the others.
What was my obligation to them? Certainly none of them had threatened us or made any other move that justified deadly force. How could I just sit by and let Bayta murder them?
Prif Klas had the reader out now, fingering it as he eyed Bayta suspiciously across the table. He wasn’t fooled; he knew something here was off-key. “Very well,” he said at last. “But first, you and Compton will remove your vac suits.”
The skin of Bayta’s face went even tighter. She shot a look at me—
“Well, come on,” I seconded, putting a little impatience into my voice. “Get it off and tell them what they want to know so we can get out of here.”
For a split second she just stared at me, a whole series of emotions flicking across her face. Then, with a final twitch of her lip, her expression went back to its usual wooden flatness.
A flatness I was doing my best to emulate… because in order to remove our vac suits, the Halkas were first going to have to take off our wristcuffs.
Of course, that would still leave a ratio of two Halkan soldiers plus a major to one of me. But it was still our best chance. Probably our only chance.
The two soldiers stepped to either side of Bayta and hauled her to her feet. I watched their procedure, planning when and how I would make my move when it was my turn.
And then, as one of the soldiers reached for the fasteners at her collar, the conference door slid open behind them.
Both soldiers spun around, hands dropping automatically to their weapons. But it was only a Cimma in a bright orange vac suit, his faceplate darkened as if he’d just come in from outside but his pear shape unmistakable as he waddled into the room. He saw us and came to an abrupt halt. “Does this be the ski instruction group?” he asked tentatively, his gravelly voice through his helmet sounding like it was coming from a deep pit.
“You have the wrong room,” Prif Klas said tartly.
Keeping my upper body motionless, I gathered my feet beneath me. One did not turn down a gift from heaven, and with the Cimma’s appearance my odds had suddenly improved. The two soldiers now had their backs to me, and the others had at least part of their attention distracted toward the end of the room.
It was time to make my move.
The two soldiers were the obvious targets. But with Applegate and most of the table between us, I knew I’d never reach them in time.
But Mahf was another story. He was sitting directly across from me, his status guns gleaming in their shoulder holsters. If I could get across the table fast enough, I might be able to grab one of those guns before he could react. Getting a grip on the edge of the table, I eased my weight off the chair, preparing to kick it backward out of my way.
“My apologies,” the Cimma said, bowing low and stretching his arms out as if preparing to bless us. I caught a glimpse of a pair of slender orange tubes fastened to the undersides of each of his forearms—
And with a double snap like the breaking of small branches, a pair of projectiles shot out to catch the two Halkan soldiers squarely in their torsos.
They staggered back into the table, clutching at their chests and fumbling for their guns. A quarter second later their legs folded beneath them, dropping them onto the floor, even as the major seated beside Bayta caught a round of his own and collapsed onto the table. Across from me, Mahf snarled a curse, shoving his chair violently backward and throwing himself after it as he grabbed for his guns. But the Cimma was already tracking his movement, and again the wrist guns snapped, turning the dive into a crumple and sending his guns skittering uselessly away across the floor.
Prif Klas and the Peer, older and more cultured and far less accustomed to sudden and violent action, didn’t even make it out of their chairs.
Which left just Bayta, Applegate, and me. “Easy,” I cautioned, holding my cuffed hands up for the Cimma’s inspection. “We may be on the same side here.”
“Perhaps,” the other said. “One moment, if you please.”
Keeping one of his wrist guns pointed at Applegate, he systematically fired three more rounds with the other into each of the figures already sprawled in chairs or on the floor. “It requires more than one snoozer to put a walker completely to sleep,” he commented. With his one hand still trained on Applegate, he reached up now with the other and touched his faceplate control. The darkening cleared away…
And to my complete lack of surprise, I found
Korak
Fayr gazing back at me. “Thanks for the assist,” I said. “And in the traditional nick of time, too.”
“You were in need of assistance,” he said, eyeing Bayta and Applegate. “These are trusted colleagues?”
“Bayta is,” I said, bending the truth only a little. “I’m afraid I can’t vouch for Mr. Applegate.”
Applegate sent me a surprised look. “Well, thank you,” he growled. “Thank you very much.”
“Nothing personal,” I assured him as I lowered my wrists to my lap and started working my fingers along the edges. “Right now I don’t trust much of anyone on this rock.”
“Unless they’re renegade Bellidos, of course,” Applegate countered tartly, brushing my fingers aside and starting to work on the cuffs himself.
“Who said I trust them, either?” I said, looking back at Fayr. He was busily stripping the sleeping Halkan soldiers of guns and comms, the orange of his chameleon vac suit fading rapidly to dark green and the pear-shaped lower bulge collapsing in on itself as it reconfigured from its Cimman profile. “And I think it’s about time someone told me what exactly is going on.”
Fayr’s eyes flicked to Applegate. “Later.”
“Or I could just tell you now,” Applegate offered, still fiddling with my cuffs. “It turns out that Modhran coral has some properties the Halkas have been careful not to mention to the rest of us. To be specific, chemicals in the shell material that create a mild narcotic effect in most species. For a small percentage of the populace, it can be as addicting as heroin-3 or Redpeace.” He looked over at Fayr. “We’re not
that
far out of the loop,
Korak
Fayr.”
“Never mind the loop,” I growled. As bad as heroin-3? “And they’ve been shipping this stuff across the galaxy for
how
long?”
“The officials claim they didn’t know,” Applegate said. “Maybe they didn’t. But someone’s been using the coral to manipulate people. Important people, corporations—maybe even entire governments.”
“Including some in the Estates-General?” I suggested, lifting my eyebrows at Fayr.
Fayr didn’t reply, but Applegate nodded. “There’s a fair chance of it. Those who’ve been caught, needless to say, haven’t been very forthcoming.”
“So who’s behind it?” I asked.
Applegate shrugged. “Some secret group calling themselves the Modhri,” he said. “Whoever they are, the source of their power is sitting right here, a kilometer below our feet. Destroy that, and they’re finished.”
I looked at Fayr again. Both he and Bayta, I noted with interest, had been remarkably quiet during this whole conversation. “Comments?” I invited.
“Mr. Applegate has caught the essence,” Fayr said, his voice neutral as he circled the table and gathered up Mahf’s guns.
“Just the essence?” I asked.
“There are a few other details.” Fayr gestured toward the sleeping Peer. “For one, that this Halka is one of them. He controls the company that mines, packages, and ships the coral.”
“Ah.” I looked back at Applegate. “What’s the Confederation’s position on this?”
He made a face. “Officially, we haven’t got one. We don’t have any of the coral on our worlds, and we mean to keep it that way. Unofficially”—he gave my cuffs a final tweak and popped them free—“the UN supports any action that keeps dangerously addictive drugs off the streets. As far as I’m concerned, Modhra I is fair game. If you want to assist them, I won’t stop you.”
I looked at Bayta. “You want to go?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice trembling slightly.
“
Korak
Fayr?”
The Bellido gave a slight bow. “Your assistance would be valuable.”
“Then we’re on,” I said, getting to my feet.
“Go get ’em, tiger,” Applegate said, a slight smile touching his lips.
I got out of my chair and circled around behind him, then paused and turned back. “There’s just one other thing,” I said, gesturing to Fayr. “We wouldn’t want Prif Klas and Mahf to wonder if you betrayed them, now, would we?”
Applegate’s eyes went wide. “What? Wait a—”
His protest was cut off by the snap of Fayr’s wrist gun. He had just enough time to send me a baleful glare, and then his eyes rolled up and he slumped unconscious in his chair. “Good shot,” I said pulling my helmet off its shoulder clip and putting it back on. I turned off the suit’s comm and retrieved the remora transceiver from my pocket, sticking it back onto my faceplate. “What’s our first move?” I asked, choosing one of the Halkan guns from the neat row Fayr had laid out on the table and sliding it into a side pocket where it would be handy.
“You shall see,” Fayr said, his voice coming distantly from the remora as he fixed another of the little transceivers to the bottom of Bayta’s faceplate. His chameleon suit had settled into a nice copy of a Halkan military outfit. “Bring your carrybags,” he added, picking up the other Halkan gun. “We will not return to this place.”
The corridor outside the conference room was deserted. We saw a few people as we made our way to the airlocks, including a couple of Halkan soldiers. But it was always at a distance, and as far as I could tell none of them gave us a second look.
Everything outside looked pretty much the way we’d left it a few minutes earlier. The torchferry was still sitting on the ice, with the Halkan troop carrier squatting nearby. We headed toward the landing area, Bayta and me in front with our luggage, Fayr walking behind us with his gun out like a good Halkan prisoner escort should. “I hope you’re not relying on this charade to get us aboard that troop carrier,” I warned. “Halkan commandos have chameleon suits, too.”
“No fears,” Fayr assured me. Faintly through my remora I heard the sound of someone reporting to him on his own suit comm. “Other transportation has been arranged.”
Right on cue, a large bulky vehicle hove into view over the horizon, heading our direction. It took me a couple of puzzled seconds to identify it as the heavy lifter I’d seen earlier, now with the damaged tour bus clutched beneath it on its grapples. The lifter continued toward us, flying low and much faster than I would have expected something lugging that much mass could manage.
I was still watching when the grapples released in midair, sending the bus arcing sedately toward the surface. I heard Bayta’s sharp intake of air; and a second later the bus slammed squarely into the aft section of the troop carrier.
Even in Modhra’s thin atmosphere the impact was loud enough to hear, like a meat grinder that had had a bone tossed into it. “To the torchferry,” Fayr ordered over the noise.
We picked up our pace, fighting to maintain the delicate balance between maximal speed without hitting the ground hard enough to go bounding kangaroo-style into the air. Behind us, people were starting to pour from the lodge’s airlocks in response to the crash, and I saw a dozen figures in military vac suits hurrying in from over two of the nearby hills. The lifter itself, now relieved of its burden, shot past the lodge and disappeared over the horizon in the direction of the toboggan tunnels.
We reached the torchferry’s open outer door without incident and slipped inside. I drew my gun, just in case, as Fayr closed the door and cycled the airlock. The inner door slid open, and we went inside.
I needn’t have bothered with the gun. There were two figures already at the torchferry’s command and copilot stations, and though their vac suits were pure Halkan military it was obvious from their nonchalant glances our direction that they were in fact two of Fayr’s commandos. “I guess this explains where the Halkas’ prisoner went,” I commented as Fayr gestured us forward.
“Actually, he is piloting the lifter,” Fayr said. “I assumed that the last direction the Modhri would expect him to flee would be to the scene of his previous activity. Can you fly this vehicle?”
“Probably.” I stepped between the two Bellidos and gave the controls a quick look. All the labels were in Halkora, but the layout was standard enough. “Make that yes,” I said. “Provided you don’t want anything too complicated.”
“Nothing complicated at all,” Fayr assured me, gesturing the Bellidos out of their seats. “We need only return to where you found me earlier this morning.”
“Got it,” I said, slipping into the pilot’s seat and strapping in. I checked the thrusters and ion-plasma drive, confirmed they’d been run properly through their warm-up. “Say when.”
“Lift now,” Fayr said.
My limited Westali flight training had centered around starfighters and other military craft, and the first thing I noticed was how sluggishly the torchliner responded. But as I got us pointed the right direction and fed power to the ion-plasma drive it became considerably more lively, and we were pressed gently back into our seats as we shot over the frozen landscape below. A minute later, we’d reached the end of the red pylons and the unfinished toboggan tunnels. “Now what?” I called.
“We must melt the ice over the north tunnel,” Fayr called from the rear of the compartment. “You know where.”
I glanced back over my shoulder, paused for a longer look. While I’d been concentrating on my flying, Fayr and his buddies had been putting together a pair of very nasty-looking 15 mm hip-mounted packet guns. “Nice,” I said. “You get all this stuff from Sistarrko?”
“Yes,” Fayr said. “Military-class weapons cannot be transported via Quadrail, so we brought in trade goods and purchased the equipment we needed from local manufacturers.”
“By way of the black market, I’d guess,” I said. “Incidentally, you
do
realize those are outside toys, right?”
“No fears,” he assured me. “Concentrate on melting the ice, and leave us to deal with the starfighters.”
“The—?” I checked my board, then lifted my eyes to look out the canopy.
There they were, all right: a matched pair of Chafta 669s hovering watchfully over the ice, their bows pointed our direction.
And as I watched, one of them dipped its bow and then raised it upward again, tracking its weapons-lock systems across our hull in the universal command to surrender. “They’re not looking very happy,” I warned Fayr.
“Ignore them,” he said as he helped one of his armed compatriots into the starboard airlock. The other gunner was already in the portside lock, the inner door closing behind him. “This is a civilian craft,” he added, coming forward and taking the copilot’s seat. “They won’t fire on us until they realize we have not been fooled.”
“Fooled how?”
“Later,” Fayr said. “Now—carefully.”
I eased the torchferry to a hovering halt a dozen meters off the surface and perhaps thirty past the spot in the north tunnel where the buried sub waited. Tilting the bow upward—no simple task the way our force thrusters were vectored—I slowly fed power to the drive. “How exactly haven’t we been fooled?” I asked again as the ice began to boil away in a tornado of swirling white.
“I told you earlier that several of Applegate’s details were incorrect,” Fayr said, alternating his attention between the aft display’s boiling ice and the starfighters hovering in front of us. So far, he was right about them not seeming all that worried about what we were doing. “One of the more critical is the nature of the threat we face,” Fayr continued. “The Modhri is not simply a group of drug distributors. He is instead the coral itself.”
I frowned. “He—I mean they—
what
?”
“Modhran coral consists of many small polyps within a shell-like matrix,” he explained. “Unlike other corals, these polyps in large numbers form the cells of a group mind. A little more to the left.”
I eased the drive stream a few degrees that direction. “What do you mean, a group mind?”
“The polyps function like the cells of a normal brain, except that instead of connecting neurons they are linked telepathically,” he said. “A few thousand together can create a rudimentary self-awareness, and a large enough group can link with others up to hundreds of kilometers away to create a larger and more capable intelligence.” He eyed me. “You don’t believe me, of course.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I said cautiously. Certainly not to someone with a pair of packet guns at his beck and call. “How do you know all this?”
“There,” he said, pointing at the display. “You see it?”
I looked at the display, fully expecting to see some amorphous mass of coral rising from the steam and freezing rain, like Count Dracula in a classic dit rec horrorific. But there was nothing; and it was only as I took a second look that I realized he was pointing to a pair of gray-metal pillars, the elevator beams attached to the stolen sub. We were almost there. “So what exactly is the threat?” I asked. “The chunks that have been exported spy for the main branch or something?”
“The exported masses of coral—we name them
outposts
—are too far from the homeland for direct linkage,” Fayr said. “The danger lies in the mobile colonies, or walkers, which they have created in most of the galaxy’s social and governmental leaders.”
A creepy sensation was starting to twist its way through me. “What do you mean, created? Created how?”
“By touch,” he said. “A polyp hook can enter a person’s skin and bloodstream via a small scratch when the coral is touched. Once there, it grows into a complete organism, then divides and grows and creates its own colony.”
“And then?”
“The colony creates a hidden secondary personality,” Fayr said. “It normally remains in the back of its host’s mind, offering subtle suggestions for behavior and decisions. Usually very reasonable suggestions, which the host can easily rationalize away.”
Go on
, Mahf had urged that afternoon in the casino.
Touch the coral
.
And a day later, strangely and inexplicably asleep on my feet, I’d nearly rationalized my way into doing just that. “Do you need one inside you to get these suggestions?” I asked, not at all sure I wanted to hear the answer. If they’d gotten one of these things into me without my knowledge…
To my relief, he shook his head. “No, a large enough colony has the ability to offer suggestions at a distance,” he said. “We call them thought viruses. They can linger in a person’s mind for minutes or sometimes hours.”
“Giving the victim plenty of time to talk himself into going along with them,” I said grimly.
“Indeed.” Fayr pointed. “There.”
The top of the sub was visible now through the steam, its sides emerging as the ice melted away. “So if you’re trying to destroy the coral, what’s the sub doing way up here?” I asked.
“Shut down now so that the lifter may attach,” he said. “Once that’s done, we can melt away the rest of the ice.”
There was fresh movement on the aft display: The heavy lifter that had dropped the bus on the troop carrier had appeared from inside the south tunnel and was maneuvering carefully through the ice storm toward the sub. “Beware,” Fayr warned. “The starfighters will soon make their response.”
I looked back at the Chaftas. Neither had moved; but suddenly I had the sense that they were bracing for action. “Against us or the sub?”
“The sub,” Fayr said. “But—”
His protest was cut off as I threw power to the maneuvering baffles, turning us ponderously around and vectoring the thrusters to slide us directly between the Chaftas and the sub. “You
did
say they wouldn’t fire on us, right?” I shouted over the roar.
The words were barely out of my mouth when the starfighters attacked.
They split their formation, one going high, the other going low, both trying to do an end run around the bulk of the torchferry I’d now moved to block their direct line of fire at the sub and lifter. I cut back on the thrusters, dropping closer toward the ice to further block the low-run attacker. He dropped lower in response, apparently figuring that in a game of chicken his maneuverability would beat out mine. His partner, with me obligingly clearing the high road for him, swooped in for the kill.
To be met by a withering hail of anti-armor packet fire from the Bellido in my portside airlock. The Chafta twisted hard around, trying to get out of way as a portion of his starboard engine nacelle shredded under the multiple impacts.
The first starfighter was still trying to slip beneath me. Setting my teeth, I started to drop us lower—
And twitched in surprise as Fayr reached over to his copilot’s board and threw full power to the thrusters instead. “What are you doing?” I snapped as the torchferry lurched upward like a slightly drunk cork.
“Clearing the path,” he called back. “Brace yourself.”
I was taking in a fresh lungful of air when a slender black cylinder riding a streak of yellow fire shot horizontally beneath us. It caught the low-road starfighter squarely in its forward weapons cluster.
With a brilliant flash of smoke and fire, the Chafta disintegrated.
I shifted my attention to the other direction. Standing side by side in the opening to the south tunnel were a pair of Bellidos with shoulder-mounted missile launchers. Even as I watched, the second launcher flared with yellow fire, sending its missile shooting over the top of the torchferry into the remaining starfighter. Another explosion, and the fight was over.
With an effort I found my voice. “Well,” I said as conversationally as I could manage. “That went well.”
“For the moment,” Fayr agreed tightly. “The question will be what surprises he may yet have waiting.”
“This was surprising enough for me,” I assured him. The two Belldic gunners had discarded their launchers and were heading down into the crater I’d melted in the ice, while the rest of the Bellidos I’d seen that morning appeared from the tunnel behind them and followed. The group reached the half-exposed sub and the lifter hovering above it and began connecting them together via the elevator beams. “As long as we have a minute, you want to finish your story?” I suggested. “Starting with what the sub is doing up
here
if you’re gunning for the coral down
there
.”
“Because we’re
not
gunning for the coral down there,” Fayr said. “That was the other critical error in Applegate’s story.” He pointed downward. “This, you see, is not the world where Modhran coral originates.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, forgetting for a moment the packet guns behind me. “Every report I’ve ever seen says it does.”
“True, the reports state that it comes from Modhra I,” he said, his whiskers stiffening in a tight smile. “But
this
is not Modhra I. The Modhri, in an effort to confuse potential attackers, has switched the names of the two moons.”
I stared at him. “You’re joking. How do you rename two entire worlds without somebody noticing?”
“Who would notice?” Fayr pointed out reasonably. “Those who do the harvesting, packing, and shipping are all walkers, firmly controlled by the Modhri whispering in their minds. All others simply accept official designations as to which moon of the Modhra Binary is which.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. There
was
a certain weird logic about it, I had to admit. “And you’re sure
you’ve
got it right?”